Study: Junk Food more Deadly than War, Famine, Genocide

Researchers reveal disturbing numbers

Healthy Living

Food in the end, in our tradition, is something holy. It’s not about nutrients and calories. It’s about sharing. It’s about honesty. It’s about identity. ~ Louise Fresco

You may already know that junk food is bad for your health, but you may not realize how bad it can be. A new study from the School of Medical Sciences at Australia’s University of New South Wales points to profound brain changes that junk food causes, making a junk food habit “more deadly than war, famine, and genocide”.

Say what? Yep, the food war is real, and though the UNSW study was conducted on rats, the brain changes observed matter to us humans. As mammals we share similar brain functioning in the orbitofrontal cortex, the part of our gray matter responsible for sensing and evaluating the pleasurable aspects of food.

Makers of junk food know it is highly addictive, but the UNSW study proves unequivocally that junk food alters behavior by causing near-permanent changes in the brain’s reward circuiting, an alteration that can trigger obesity.

The study abstract concluded:

“We observed that rats fed a cafeteria diet for 2 weeks showed impaired sensory-specific satiety following consumption of a high calorie solution. The deficit in expression of sensory-specific satiety was also present 1 week following the withdrawal of cafeteria foods. Thus, exposure to obesogenic diets may impact upon neurocircuitry involved in motivated control of behavior.”

While mammals developed a natural trigger over our evolutionary history which prevents us from over-eating, a phenomenon termed “sensory-specific satiety,” the consumption of junk food overrides this natural ‘kill’ switch that allows us to regulate the calories we consume.

Junk food consumption also causes mitochondrial dysfunction and tissue inflammation, which leads to a host of other diseases. Perhaps most troubling, though, is that these fake foods also mess with our internal motivation and reward system – which causes us to seek more nutrition-less junk. It’s like programming a time bomb and just waiting for it to blow.

Here is What Happened in the Study

In the UNSW study, rats were fed a standard junk food diet, complete with cookies, cakes, biscuits, and other junk foods for two weeks. Another group of rats were fed a ‘standard lab chow’ diet. They were then observed under Pavlovian conditions, when a sound cue informed the rats it was time for their next serving. You can guess what happened.

The ‘junk-food rats’ ate until they were glutinously full, obese, and ill, and the ‘healthy –diet rats’ stopped eating naturally – when they were full, and not over-stuffed.

What’s most interesting though is what happened to the ‘junk food rats’ once they were returned to a normal diet. They still had the tendency to overeat. Their brains were literally trained to eat too much, and held that habit even after environmental factors were changed.

Dr. Amy Reichelt, lead author of the UNSW study says:

“As the global obesity epidemic intensifies, advertisements may have a greater effect on people who are overweight and make snacks like chocolate bars harder to resist.”

Professor Margaret Morris, another UNSW team member added:

“It’s like you’ve just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by.”

It is no wonder we are facing a global obesity epidemic. The United States is the epicenter of this troubling phenomenon, with 2 our of 3 Americans being clinically overweight or obese.

If we check the numbers against the Historical Atlas of the 20th Century, 203 million people died in the last century from war and oppression – including military and collateral civilian casualties from conflicts, genocide, politicide (i.e., the extermination of people who share a political belief), mass murders, and famines. This equates to an average of 2. million deaths a year – but the junk food habit kills more.

Even at the humble and likely modest estimation of the World Health Organization, at least 2.8 million people die annually from diseases linked to obesity including heart disease, diabetes, and brain stroke.

The junk food habit is killing 40% more people than wars, famine, dictators, murderers, and politicians put-together. Still think there’s no reason to fight for food freedom so that Americans and people everywhere can enjoy healthful, non-processed, nutrient-dense, organic food? The toxic food manufactured by corporations like McDonald’s, Kentucky Fired Chicken, Pepsi-Co, and Kraft is simply killing us -slowly.

Rodale points to 31 completely pointless foods you can find in your grocery store, but we all know that there are thousands of toxic, genetically modified, high-fructose-corn syrup-containing, MSG-laden foods. The problem is that some of these foods are not so easily recognized.

Concerningly, most Americans have been tricked through brain-piercing marketing ploys into thinking these junk foods are healthful. For example, companies use terms like “healthy” or “natural” as a means to convince us it’s a good buy – this is one of many food tricks.

You know the modern food system is broken too, when even vegetables are now cause for concern – the GMO, pesticide-laden kind, that is.

So what can one do to counter-balance this literal food war? Start by eating unprocessed foods in organic form. It is really that simple. That, and growing your own food is essential. Eating better is the best weapon against the corporate coup which has us eating toxic junk straight into the hospital.

Post written byChristina Sarich:Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

Junk food a threat? Really?
The biggest threat to human survival…is…”apathy”.
Scientific research can blame anything as a threat to human survival, but it is apathy that will be our downfall. Oh yeah, “ignorance” isn’t far behind either.

the trolls are flocking to this article…keep eating the slow kill junk and when you are diseased, cancer laden and sick just remember “you are what you eat” just look at the rats who ate the gmo corn. It is just so much easier to eat whatever you want and care not the consequences until you are too heavy to move and too dumbed down to care…eat up..sad

No actually the ones who are disgusting are those stick models who starve themselves and come on TV telling everyone how much better they are than everyone else.
By the way many overweight people have defective genes which make them gain weight just by looking at food.
Your comments here are gross, lazy and stupid!

Certain comments offered up here are glaring examples of why people in NA are obese and in poor health. You would think readers here would have enough sense to learn from this dissertation. They would rather be lulled into thinking that if it tastes good that it is good for you. The problem is that we will never find out what this garbage is really doing to us until it is too late. Plus our health system will eventually be overloaded by an unhealthy population who didn’t heed the warnings by writers like yourself.
Keep up the communication.

You just don’t get it, do you? The title says that junk food – JUNK FOOD – is worst than starvation and famine. They are saying it’s worse than war with the horrors of the dead Jews in extermination camps. Worse than the genocide against the millions who died in the Ukraine from Stalin, or the millions who died in Communist China.

Do you not see how utterly STUPID and idiotic the whole premise is? If not, you are as sick in the head as the author of this piece of MENTAL JUNK FOOD.

Are you a troll or just a person with poor reading comprehension skill? The stated premise is that junk food kills more people, not that it’s worse than war, etc. We’re you “educated” in a government screwel?

It would probably be wiser for you to try and look for the positive points in this essay.

And I do get “IT”. “It” being simply that junk food is not good for you. You simply won’t win any arguments with your comments here. I will be the first to agree that lack of exercise is one contributing factor. However, when you analyze what the ingredients are in this junk food you will discover that such things as huge amounts of sugar (to name only one ingredient) have a documented negative effect on health.
I fail to understand why, in one breath, you would advocate one healthy attribute (exercise) and put down another (healthy eating). It’s tantamount to saying it’s all right to smoke while you bicycle!

It’s a good argument. You just don’t see it because this type of attack is slow and invisible, but it’s happening as I type this, it’s happening as millions of people are stuffing themselves with this poison. It’s a new type of weapon, they’re invisible and even more insidious, for they’re gradually killing us.

According to the Social Security Administration the life expectancy of Americans continues to increase. All that guilt-free “junk food” of the sixties and seventies that the boomers grew up on must be having a beneficial effect.

No, we DO NOT know that “junk food” is addicting. All the junk food we have now we had 50 years ago. And NOW we have decided it is addictive? Pray tell, how did we survive until now without wiping out the entire nation within that 50 years.

No, its the food. Do some real research or if your completely lazy you can watch a documentary which provides facts that have been swept under the rug for generations. Fed Up is the name of it. I’ll make it short and sweet, sugar is the main culprit since it’s more addictive than cocaine. If you lose weight you gain it back because it’s so addictive. I too thought that exercise was the main objective in being healthy but we’ve all been lied to. It’s not our fault that corporations own the media and governments enough to brainwash the whole world.

As a kid, I would stuff my face full of candy and chocolate. I’m now a healthy 59 year old who can climb up the stairs of 100 foot structures. PUHLEASE don’t preach to me about the FAKE dangers of sugar.